Chelating Shampoo

My chelating shampoo arrived today (Joico K-Pak Chelating shampoo in case anyone is interested) and so the big clean happened.

First I washed my hair well with the chelating shampoo twice. I really gave a my scalp a good scrub, even more so than normal, and left the shampoo on for a couple of minutes while working it in to ensure that it had the best chance to remove possibly years of mineral build up. I have lived in a hard water area for my entire life so far and never used a chelating shampoo. I was trying to keep my expectations low so that I wouldn’t become miserable if things didn’t work out as I hoped, but logically this just seemed to be the missing link from a lifetime of bad hair.

At the end of this my hair felt odd. I admit, my perception of how hair should feel is likely somewhat distorted, but it felt slightly stretchy and almost sticky. The shampoo does contain proteins though and this is the first time I have knowingly used proteins on my hair. This could just be my hair reacting to the protein as I don’t think it particularly needs any.

The next step was an apple cider vinegar rinse. I really wanted to make thoroughly sure that every last bit of crap on my hair was removed. I’m still berating myself for having not done this at the start of all my experiments.

After rinsing, I slathered my hair in conditioner (TRESemme naturals moisturising conditioner), popped it all in a shower cap for half an hour and then rinsed it out.

Results of chelating shampoo

 

I sat here with my hair in my microfibre turban and worried about taking it off. What if this doesn’t work? I’d run out of ideas so if this didn’t fix things I had nothing left to try.

The first thing I noticed when my hair dried was that it dried quicker. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or not but it was something I noticed. I don’t mean a little quicker either, but an hour or two less than normal. It looked fairly messy as I really had tried not to touch it much and had added no styling products, but that wasn’t the aim of this wash anyway.

My hair felt not softer as such, but fuller…not stringy and lifeless as is normal. It looked softer and shinier although I don’t actually think it was softer. And it had pretty impressive waves for hair that hadn’t been styled.

 

I feel that this was a success, but I’ll take a better look tomorrow after its been slept on for a night to see what it looks like then. If I’m still as happy with it tomorrow then its time to start up the experiments again!

 

Lemon Juice

 

Today I decided to try a lemon juice rinse. I’ve seen a lot of debate about it on the LHC forums and it looked like it might answer the problems I was having.

First I did my usual wash with cheap conditioner, followed by a condition with a thicker conditioner. After rinsing the conditioner out I finished the wash with a cool rinse containing a dilution of lemon juice. I used 2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon (strained to remove pith etc) in 1 litre of cool water. I rinsed my hair over a bowl and refilled the jug several times from the bowl to try to cover as much hair as possible.

After the rinse I scrunched the excess water out of my hair and plopped my hair in a microfibre headwrap for 30 mins to get most of the water off.

Close up of hair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not sure what I think of the results yet. The results that others had reported were (borrowing Ktani’s summary of results from the lemon rinse thread at LHC:

1. Exceptional frizz control that lasts between shampoos – Still looks pretty frizzy to me. Maybe what I think of frizz is different to other people?
2. No reported dryness – This I can agree to. Despite my hair’s tendency towards dryness, my hair feels fine.
3. Defined curls or waves – Well, there were a few defined wurls. There were a couple of spiral curls at the side of my head and many S waves, but there were also a lot of barely wavy at all strands and everything just seemed to become one big mess rather quickly.

I am a little disappointed actually. I was hoping for much more of a difference. I may have fiddled with it slightly more than was necessary maybe or be misinterpreting what is wrong with my hair, but its still a bit of a mess. Too messy to wear down again so back to braids/buns.

 

 

Mineral Oil – My Secret Enemy

I must apologise but there are no pictures today. I’m exhausted and it was as much as I could do to get my hair washed. This is just a quick update to record that I tried my previous CO wash with an Apple Cider Vinegar rinse again still using the SMT as a conditioner and my hair has come out lovely. The only thing I omitted was the mineral oil and suddenly no weird hair repelling mess. The guess must have been right – mineral oil hates my hair!

However this is still leaving me with hair that continually tangles and frizzes as the mineral oil had been an attempt to control this. Time to find something else to try.

 

Brief Interlude

Its been longer than I would have liked since I last updated. I haven’t been forgetting, I just haven’t been very well and wasn’t up to washing my hair. Its just been thrown into a loose braid and every day I added a little more diluted conditioner or a little oil to stop it drying out.

My hair isn’t overly greasy, even after more than a week and adding oil (jojoba). My scalp is itchy because it needs a wash, but my hair is still drinking up any oil or conditioner that gets near it. Maybe after my wash it will be in better condition than it has been of late. I’m heading to my Dad’s place this weekend to work on more wedding preparations and hear our banns read at the church so I need to prepare my hair for 4-5 hours of travel and still have it look nice on Sunday morning. I’m planning on putting it into rope braids and just gambling that I’ll get good braid waves on Sunday.

After reading a few more tips over at the LHC forums, I tried a little change to my CO wash. I’m still using the cheap clarifying conditioner from Wilkinson’s, but I diluted it a little with water and scrubbed my scalp with it while my hair was still dry. I’m hoping this will help remove the extra oil I put in my hair this week. The scrub felt fantastic after more than a  week with no wash! I really went overboard and worked at it with the pads of my fingers until my fingers and arms ached (OK that’s a lot quicker for me than it probably is for you because of the ME/CFS, but I spent several minutes on it). After rinsing this out, I then did a normal wet hair wash with the same conditioner just to be sure that all the oil and dirt had been removed.

This week my fiancé got me some hair supplies and I was eager to try a few of them just to try to see a difference as well as feeling the need of spoiling myself after such a yucky week. I have some JoJoba Oil, Apple Cider Vinegar and some Aloe Vera Gel. I added 2 tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar to a litre of cool water and let the length of my hair sit in this for a minute or so. After it had sat for a while and I’d tolerated as much of the horrid vinegar stench as I could, I removed my hair from the jug and slowly poured the contents over my scalp (with eyes tightly closed – vinegar and eyes do not mix!). I am hoping that as I live in a hard water area the acidity of the ACV rinse will remove any deposits on my hair as well as ensuring that my scalp has a nice healthy acidic pH again.

Next I tried something I’d been waiting ages to try: Snowymoon’s Moisture Treatment. I have heard so many recommendations about this recipe ever since joining the LHC forums and it sounded like a perfect treat for my dry hair. I didn’t have any Aloe Vera Gel until now though so I’d just settled with adding some honey to my conditioner occasionally. Not today! Today I made a batch of the SMT using all the standard ingredients, really worked it into all the hair well and then left it for 2 hours under a shower cap and towel.

 

The mixture felt lovely going on, but when it came time to rinse it out there were many white flakes, despite using a brand of AV gel that was reported to not cause flakes. They seem to have washed out fairly well though, although it did require a lot of rinsing. As I’ll be combing it when dry to put into braids I’m not too worried but it would have been a problem if I was just going to scrunch it and leave it to natural curl.

Finally, after squeezing as much water out as possible, I sprayed on a diluted version of my TRESemme Naturals conditioner as a leave-in. A bit of gentle finger-combing to reduce the tangles, another quick scrunch through with a T-shirt to get more water out and then I ran my hands through it with a tiny amount of Mineral Oil to help define, protect and reduce tangling.

I’ll update when its dry but that may take hours yet.

 

Disappointed

I tried my second attempt at CO washing yesterday. This time I had a new conditioner to wash with so that I didn’t use the much more expensive TRESemme conditioner up too quickly. This one was a silicone free Wilkinsons own brand.

I did the same as before, except the first wash I substituted the cheap conditioner and then used the TRESemme just for the conditioning part. Did the usual scrunch out of extra water and then plopped it on my head in a Tshirt to dry for a while.

When I took it down, I was disappointed to find that I didn’t even have as much wave as last time. My hair isn’t feeling as dry and crunchy as it has been but I don’t think its managed to get particularly soft and shiny yet. Hard to tell when it isn’t straight.

 

I guess it was just a bad hair day. I went to bed last night with my hair scrunchied up on the top of my head so I’ll leave you with a rare shot of morning hair (and face).

 

Oh My God!

OK…I know how often I’ve said that I really just wanted to change on thing at a time and that I was going to work on Mineral Oil application for a couple of weeks, but the first application made my hair go horrid and crunchy and I got rather depressed with it all.

In desperation I called out to the wavy haired people on the LHC forums and asked where they thought I should start next. One poster had similar hair problems to mine and swore that changing to conditioner only washes and using a silicone free conditioner had been the biggest help to her, and as I do have a silicon free conditioner I thought I had nothing to lose from trying it.

I was hoping to see a little improvement if I’m totally honest. I wanted to see something, anything that would show me that I was making some progress. I didn’t expect this:

First CO wash

I washed my hair with the Pantene Clarifying shampoo to make sure that there was no build up left from my last experiment, then washed it again with TRESemme Naturals Moisturising Conditioner, making sure I really scrubbed at the scalp with the pads of my fingers. After a quick cold water rinse to smooth down the hair cuticles, I applied more of the conditioner and left it on for around 5 minutes, working it well into all the hair.

I didn’t put anything on it to style it as I was headed to bed and all my styling products have silicones in. I just scrunched it dry and then put it in a high ponytail to sleep in. I’m still amazed at the difference. Its much softer and I’m even noticing some shine!

 

New experiment!

Today is wash day and I’m all excited!

I finally started a forum account at the Long Hair Community Forums. If you want to find me there my user name is Quenhilde. I asked for some help with my hair typing and it looks like I guessed about right. As a bizarre coincidence, one user there that gave me a lot of advice and helpful links is the author of Adelina’s Blog that I’ve been following for a month or two.

I have decided to try a two week experiment using mineral oil as a detangler/leave-in conditioner. I will be using Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Oil for this, and applying a very small amount to damp hair. My wash routine will remain the CWC that I have used for the past month, although I plan on trying Conditioner Only soon.

I have a feeling that once I manage to sort out the frizzies and rehydrate my hair a little better, I may find that my hair is curlier than I thought!

 

Check Up Time!

It’s now been a month since I started taking better care of my hair. In this time I have been using the Condition/Wash/Condition (CWC) cleaning method and doing all I can to avoid damage to the hair. I have been adding heated honey to most of the conditioning treatments I used to help bring moisture back to my hair.

On closer examination of the condition of my hair, I feel that there has been some improvement. It isn’t what I’d call “healthy” yet, but I can’t expect miracles in just a month! I feel that the CWC experiment has been beneficial to my hair. Originally I had planned to make the next experiment a conditioner only wash experiment, but I still have a lot of shampoo to use up and I’m finding that the worst problem with my hair currently is tangling and looking frizzy. I would like to see if oiling my hair can help with this at all.

 

Washday Update

Well it took more than a day to be well enough to wash my hair again, but then I wasn’t able to go out so I didn’t mind too much that it got a little greasy.  Still on the CWC routine. Today I used the Aussie Long Hair shampoo to try to finish the bottle up and both conditioners were the Tresemme naturals moisturising conditioner mixed with equal part heated honey. The Tresemme conditioner works a lot better than the Aussie one I used last time, as the Aussie conditioner doesn’t mix very well. Its probably due to the silicones in the Aussie conditioner but I know that some still mix okay with honey so I had to try it.

I’ll be leaving the conditioner on for a couple of hours to really soak in (all wrapped up inside a shower cap and thick towel). I have noticed an improvement in the condition of my hair so far, but some of that will be due to the reduced amount of damage I am doing to it as well as the washing regime. I’m really looking forward to getting a close up picture of the hair condition at the end of the month!

 

Back to the routine

Today was wash day, so as promised I am sticking to my CWC routine.  As my hair is still so dry and in desperate need of moisture, I have chosen to condition with an equal parts mix of my Tresemme Naturals Moisturising conditioner and warmed honey. I’m warming the honey so that it doesn’t act as a hair lightener at the same time, as I’m planning on leaving it on my hair for a couple of hours under a shower cap to help absorb as much moisture into the hair as possible.

I’m not really a fan of the smell of honey so I was glad to discover that it didn’t smell too strongly once mixed with my conditioner and wrapped up on my head. I was also able to use my shower seat for the first time and despite feeling like it was resigning myself to my illness, it did actually mean that I was able to wash my hair unassisted for once. It might make me feel like I’m useless, but it was giving me more freedom! I’ve seen a lot of comments about people having bad experiences with honey if it isn’t rinsed properly so I took extra time at the rinse stage to be sure I got it all. I’m leaving it to air-dry today though, so I won’t really know how well it worked until tomorrow.